The American Civil War
 

We've been rewriting the history of the War for Southern Independence, the War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War since day one. Slavery was a big part of the war, but just like in Iraq the reasons for the war shifted to keep the people on board. Lincoln himself started out saying it was about the Union.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

August 22, 1862 - Letter to Horace Greeley

The Republican Party was the heir to the Whig Party. They were the party of "internal improvements". They more or less believed in Hamilton's powerful centralized government and an industrial America as opposed to the Democrats adherence to Thomas Jefferson's de-centralized vision of states rights in an agricultural land. These two visions grew increasingly incompatible with big political battles over taxation. The Republicans supported import taxes to support homegrown industry in the North, which unduly burdened the South because it relied on trade with England. The big government Republicans wanted federal funding for roads and canals to support their manufacturing, while the Southerners wanted to maintain their agricultural economy.

Economics...

I have heard that they freed the slaves because they had too but I never heard the official reason. My best guess was an economic reason or that there wasn't enough people to keep them in slavery since so many people died but that doesn't seem right...

I don't think that is correct. As Griff stated the arguments and fight continues to this day. I am from the North, moved to the mid-West, and now live in the South. The subject down here is as fresh as a recent rain.

Thats really sad!

are you saying that everyone thinks the Civil War was only about slavery? It never was, and anyone who thinks so is seriously misinformed. It was just as much, if not more, about economics (of which slavery certainly played a part); and ideological differences that had been smoldering since the founding. And are smoldering still.

Has history been "rewritten"? Possibly. Likely, even--it's an inevitable process condensing historical acts through the long lense of hindsight. But I think the problem is more ignorance--the facts are there if one cares to look.

Lincoln needed to put the war on a moral footing to keep his people on board. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave. It was limited to those areas which were in rebellion and by extention out of his control. He needed the abolitionists because war fatigue had set in and his new conceptualization of "Union" was not very appealing.

Slavery was already becoming economically untenable, as mechanization was coming on. Other countries were ending slavery without bloodshed and even in the States people were floating ideas for compensated manumission. Unfortunately, the rhetoric was so heated that reasonable compromise was not possible, since almost everyone believed that the other side was evil. Lincoln himself wanted to ship the freed slaves back to Africa. The way I look at it, slavery was part of the economic incompatibility of what was becoming two countries. The intensity of the times makes our red state blue state anger pale by comparison.

You'd be suprised at what has happened in history education. It is shifting again but there were a lot of social studies teachers trained to believe that saying it was about more than slavery was an insult to African-Americans. When I was in training the sociology majors were better at toeing the line as social studies teachers because they didn't know any history.

"immediately"
I should have written it that way.



btw- This thread was in response to something that popped up on another thread... it isn't as random as it looks.:)

You were certainly close enough.

The thing that amazes me about the Civil War is how alive it still is in the South. I'm from Maine, and I always lumped the Civil War in with the other old stuff I learned in history. The War of 1812, Spanish American War, etc. I thought the Revolutionary War was a far bigger deal than the Civil War because it's when we got our independence. Basically, I gave the Civil War no thought at all.

Then I moved to Northern Virginia. It was an eye opener. There are a lot of people around here from the South, and to them, the Civil War is more important than any other war in US history. If you ask them, they may say that the Revolutionary War, or the World Wars are more important, but they are only saying that because they think they are supposed to. Based on their actions, and what they talk about, the Civil War was just yesterday, and it is the most important war in US history.

It amazes me still. It was centuries ago, people!

In Texas, we celebrate something called "Juneteenth"--supposedly honoring the day the news of emancipation finally reached Way Out West.

Glatt, too true. They hold onto it very tightly.

I was in Myrtle Beach in N. or S. Carolina (can't remember which...) and I remember this beach shop where this woman and her child were shopping at. The boy was looking over a figurine of civil war soldiers. The mother said "Put that back, we don't need that." The boy put back the northern soldier figure. He said "Why not?" The mother said "You don't want that Yankee boy." The boy said "Why? But didn't the north win the war?" The mother responded with "Yeah, but they cheated."

That is a made up holiday just like freaking Kawanza is.

Not to people around here. I live in Georgia.